[Fsf-friends] Amendments proposed to the Copyrights Act

[Ramanraj K]

The Registrar  of Copyrights, Copyright Division of  the Department of
Secondary  & Higher  Education under  the Ministry  of  Human Resource
Development,  has  issued  a  notification  inviting  suggestions  and
amendments  to the  Copyright Act,  1957.  It  is available  online at
www.copyright.gov.in, along  with a  list of the  proposed amendments.

A new Section 65A for "Protection of Technological Measures" providing
that "any  person who  circumvents an effective  technological measure
applied for the  purpose of protecting any of  the rights conferred by
ths  Act, with  the  intention  of infringing  such  rights, shall  be
punishable with imprisonment  which may extent to two  years and shall
also be liable  to fine."  While Section 63  already imposes stringent
punishment   for  infringement   of  copyright,   defining  "copyright
infringement"  in  very clear  terms  under  Section  51, the  propsed
Section 65A  is vague  and seeks to  punish licencees in  an arbitrary
manner.  Further more, changes to Section 52 have also been proposed.

The  effects  of these  and  other changes  proposed  may  need to  be
carefully studied and analysed.

Earlier, a memorandum was sent to CSIR, requesting them to publish all
their research  under open formats and licenses  promoting public use.
This may be  the right occasion to send in  suggestions in response to
the notification,  so that  the Copyright Act,  by default,  makes the
works of  all Public and Educational Institutions  freely available to
the public using open standards.

There is a need to encourage  authors to release their works under the
GPL, FDL or  other general public licenses, and  the Registry may make
provision for  free online  registration, publication and  download in
such cases (probably, with just a cvs).

Please send  in suggestions to  improve, strengthen and  safeguard the
rights and works of authors contributing to the general public domain.

Ramanraj K